Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 5.djvu/805

 VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

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capital in other places. He was largely in- terested in the development of the Virginia coal mining industry, and one of the con- tributing sources of strength to that and many other industries of the State.

Mr. Jones was essentially a domestic man, and in the home circle he manifested an in- dulgent tenderness and a generosity in spending that proved his family to be the main-spring of his business energies. He was married, September 14, 1848, to Mary Frances Watts, of Bedford county, who in 191 5 still survives him. The children of this marriage were : Nannie Isabelle Jones, born July 28, 1858, died July 25, 1859 '• Georgie Lee Jones, born October 8, 1864, died unmarried, January 5, 1884: Lily Frances Jones, born June 5, 1869, died unmarried, August 12, 1885. '

His whole life and interest were bound up in these two daughters. It was for them he worked, that every opportunity might be given them, and their every reasonable wish gratified. For their sake he bravely bore his disappointment and tried to make up by double tenderness and sympathy for the want of true home atmosphere he so earn- estly desired for them. He guarded with a chivalrj- worthy a better cause the secret of the shadow that darkened his vision of a happy home and bore in silence the pain of knowing this vision would never brighten to realization.

With the sudden death of his eldest daugh- ter, Georgie, in 1884, his spirit began to break. She was the "'understanding" one, temperamentally in close accord with him, whose sympathy was his greatest comfort. Bereft of her, he poured the wealth of his starved affection upon the remaining daugh- ter. Soon after her sister's death her health gave way, and her father subordinated every- thing to the efi'ort to restore her strength and save her life. One year and a half later she, too, died, at Carlsbad, Germany, where, as a last resort, they had taken her.

This blow blotted out all joy left in life for him. He was literally bowed down by his sorrow and the alert, erect, well-dressed business man so familiar on the streets of Lynchburg was gone, and in his place an eld man passed, stooped and tragic-eyed. It was not only that his children were dead ; his incentive for living had died with them. The fruit of his hard years of business strug- gle for financial success was as chaff be-

cause it could never give happiness to those for whom he had toiled. His suffering was increased by his intense reserve and his sensitiveness to touch upon personalities. His early entrance into business had stopped his schooling at fifteen years of age. He lacked the self-confidence and ease of inter- course that come from standardized com- petition with youthful contemporaries in the formative years belonging to school and col- lege training, and the power of expression that cultural education gives. He was in- articulate except in the terse terms of busi- ness. All the finer spirit of him was im- prisoned thus within him except as express- ed in his unselfish devotion to his children.

He tried to move on in the old grooves, but the zest was gone with the inspiration of it. In June, 1887, less than two years after the death of his youngest daughter, the business of Jones, Watts & Co. was sold to associates, and the founders retired from active work. The depressing sense of failure weighed heavily upon Mr. Jones. He felt that his labor had been in vain, but his nervous energy and habits of close applica- tion to business pushed him out toward activity of some sort. His interest had been absorbed between business and home, at a period when the .South was so engrossed in building up its waste places that to the churches was left the administration of the people's philanthropy, through missionary societies and poor funds. The ideal of serv- ice in its broad application to community welfare had not then caught the South as it has to-day. Mr. Jones had had no train- ing or experience in the work of establish- ing great eleemosynary institutions, but within him there now stirred the desire for constructive community service — not hand to mouth help for the shiftless, ofifensive to his trained business sense that demanded exchange of values.

He first became interested in the question of employment for the idle woman-labor on the impoverished farms of the South, and turned his energies and capital to the estab- lishment of the Lynchburg Cotton Mills, of which he was the first president. After he accepted the presidency and undertook the active supervision of the organization and building, his residence was moved to the sulnirb of Lynchburg farthest from the mill to gratify his vi'ife"s feeling that she could no longer endure city noises. The roads were